Lucky Dip – Monday, August 8th, 2011

Dear restaurants, please don’t go thinking that hundreds of posts about your restaurant in the matter of a few hours, all using the same hashtag and (if you retweet every single tweet) flooding the twitter feed of everyone who follows you, is necessarily a selling point to make your place seem hot and vibrant and trendy. In fact, it’s annoying as hell and a real turn-off. Although that hashtag does make it easy for the rest of us to mute all the tweets and never have to see anything about your tweet-up (and possibly your restaurant) ever again. Social media can be a fabulous tool, but only if you use it judiciously. [The Grid]

It’s almost CNE time. You can tell because the ubiquitous (and horrifying) food-on-a-stick articles have started. Seriously, fudge? Why do you need a stick for fudge?? [National Post: Posted Toronto]

Fish-eaters – you know that all of these great promotions to get us to eat more sustainable species of fish really only work if you switch from the typical cod, salmon, tuna, right? Eating more fish overall, because you’re still eating just as much cod, but now are also eating mackerel, really defeats the purpose, yes? [The Guardian]

Why are poor people more likely to eat junk food and be obese? They probably haven’t thought it out in this manner, but a dollar’s worth of candy offers more calories/energy than a dollar’s worth of broccoli. [Grist]

You know you’re an old punk rocker when… you had to Google the headlining band for the Queer Beer Festival, even though everyone else was super-excited about their appearance, because you have only the vaguest idea of who they actually are. People 10 years younger than me seemed to think that Ace of Base (Bass) was a bit of a coup, though. Next year, let’s get Siouxsie, okay? [St. John’s Wort]

Remember how everyone was all, “oh that Gordon Ramsay, what a ponce, firing his father-in-law.” Turns out, Gordo’s former business partner was fleecing him, and Gordon Ramsay holdings, and even hacking into Ramsay’s emails. [Daily Mail]

If you’ve been following the progress of Not Far From the Tree, you’ll know they’ve done outstanding things over the past few years. To document it all, they’ve created a yearbook, available online or in paper version. [Not Far From the Tree]

It’s August, which means that food sites are all about back to school, so we’re seeing posts like these nifty cool lunch bags and boxes, and then fear-mongering articles about how most packed lunches (in daycares, at least) reach unsafe temperatures and could be making junior sick. [Epicurious] [MSNBC]